Fields of Glory

Jean Rouaud

The narrator of Fields of Glory is one of three siblings, in a family
from France's Atlantic coast, who lose father, great aunt and grandfather
in quick succession. He never focuses properly on his father, who
remains at the edge of vision, but uses childhood memories reworked
with an adult wisdom to render detailed portraits of his grandfather
and aunt. Grandfather Burgaud, whose closest friend was a monk but who
takes an unannounced day excursion to less respectable viewing before
he dies. And Aunt Marie, a long-serving school-teacher forced into
retirement against her will, who keeps herself busy with parish make-work.
The objects that centre memories and lives are highlighted: grandfather's
Citroen 2 CV, the garage that goes to rust and ruin after father dies,
and Aunt Marie's religious knick-knacks.

When Aunt Marie's memory starts failing, she imagines herself back during
the First World War, in which two of her brothers died. This leads, in
the last quarter of Fields of Glory, to the horrors of trench warfare
and a vivid account of the first gas attack near Ypres. And the story
ends with a 1929 trip by the brother who survived, to fetch back a body
from Commercy, and the meeting of the narrator's parents in 1940 —
perhaps a bridge to the sequel, since four subsequent novels continue
the family saga.

Past and present are interlaced, with direct memories mixed with what
must be later reconstructions. There is no linear plot. And at one
point Rouaud inserts nine pages of completely general digression on the
weather of the Lower Loire, on its persistent rain. Despite this, Fields
of Glory never seems disconnected and never loses momentum. It is a
powerful study of both old age and childhood, of the idiosyncrasies and
vagaries of memory, and of the enduring impact of the Great War on an
entire generation.